This post has moved to a permanent Gallery Page: Art On Your Face – Gallery.
Go to Modern Primitive Art to see my body painting explorations on the origins of modern art.
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- Henri Matisse The Cut-Outs — Transformations Gallery
- Mythic Faces at the Hudson River Museum
- Science On Your Face — World Science Festival 2014
- The Kinetic Art of Face Painting — Pt.1: Sending Art off into the World
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- Face Painting – Kids for Kids Event – Inspirations from Africa and India, including Rangoli (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
My introduction to this Mexican fusion of death and beauty came via the mummies of Guanajuato when I was there as a student in the 80s. In 2001 I had the opportunity to return to Guanajuato as part of the Festival International Cervantino, painting faces in the street as one of a number of international performance artists. A few days after the festival ended, just before I had to leave, the center of the town was filled with stalls of the artisans creating items for the coming Dia De los Muertos. I bought this mask, and felt really great when the woman who sold it recognized me as a fellow artist for the facepainting I’d done in those plazas the week before.
I approach the Day of the Dead as a celebration of the presence of death within life, and the continuation of life within death through the love we retain for those who have passed. I want to retain stark images of death in the faces I paint, and for inspiration I look less to the current sugar skull style and more to traditional imagery such as Posada’s La Catrina and Mexican skeleton figurines.
